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2011/Notes/Facilitating Intl Collaboration
#CLS11 - Facilitating International Collaboration session 11:00 Saturday Etherpad notes: http://notes.openmrs.org/international http://web.archive.org/liveweb/http://notes.openmrs.org/ep/pad/view/international/latest Attendees -- add your name here: *Michael Downey, OpenMRS, michael at openmrs dot org - @downeym *Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation, sumanah @ wikimedia dot org *Jacob Redding - Drupal Association - jredding@--asssociation--drupal--org-- *Jim Eastman - Open Source Bridge - Pure Imagination - jim@jimeastman.com *Kerry Finsand - Portland Community Manager at Groupon - @grouponpdx *Stephen Spector - OpenStack - stephen.spector@openstack.org ; following via notes while in another session *Alexandre Lefebvre, OW2 - alexandre.lefebvre@ow2.org *Koray Löker - Pardus Linux - loker@pardus dot org.tr **Welcome! (virtually) Goals, questions, needs, etc. *Languages, translation, etc *Cultures *Time zones *Asynchronous vs. synchronous *Online vs. offline communication *Travel, passports, etc. *People with bandwidth & connectivity issues *Perceptions of culture and what it means to the org *Crowdsourced translation vs. central, quality assurance, etc. *In a global project, are we ever allowed to go to sleep? *How to do real-time meetings? *How to internationalize/localize software? *Language-specific sub-communities for your project, how to feel connected Notes and dialogue *Some of us have previous experience dealing with multiple parts of the world, but some do not! *Tokenism - i.e., when people say/think: "You are _____ so you should know about ______" *What about group meetings? **Alternate times each period (week, etc.) **IRC logs - should be searchable! *Apache rule: "if it didn't happen in email, it didn't happen." Phone & IRC are great, but there's a rule that someone has to mail the list & give it 72 hours before decision is MADE *Crisis Commons needs to be transparent. Uses Skype - freely available (as in beer). Invite people to rooms. Can have a public dialog *What free alternatives are there to skype? (not much!) **The people you want to reach are indeed already there and installing Skype isn't a barrier to entry. **Another good thing - they have to add you as a contact, so now you are in each other's contact lists, so it feels like you are approachable. *IRC isn't always user-friendly for new or technically-challenged people. Freenode can be embedded in web pages *A few people using Google+ Hangout for meetings. Some bandwidth issues for some people, but effective for small groups if they all have the bandwidth & tech capability. *Conference calls - quality always stinks :( **Hardware/equipment is often expensive **Lots of alternatives: Skype, telephone, IRC, H.323 video/audio, Jabber/Asterisk, Adobe Connect ($), etc. **People don't mute their mics - but with reminders, this gets better over time **Some cultures are less "aggressive" in speaking up and speaking out during meetings ***Europeans, US, Asia, etc. -- jumping in, respecting agendas. ***Some people need 5 second blanks to jump in. Literally count (silently) a pause in the discussion! ***May try asking the silent people for their feedback (via IM back-channel or verbally in the call) **Many people have quiet voices! **Even when VoIP connection is fine, if there's an imbalance where the bigger team forgets about the small one on the other end of the line ***have video, or table cards with people's photos ***idea: make the in-person group split up into small groups to dial in! ****+1 ***this is especially a problem if there's a cultural barrier where someone doesn't want to say negative things in meetings, bring conflict in *Someone always needs to be driving meetings to ensure it's productive, inclusive of everyone. **Corp people sometimes get training on running effective meetings in ways that community folks don't! **Core contributors might not be best leader for doing "all the leader stuff" *Culture... what are good resources to discover good outreach models in specific places/populations? **Drupal - deals with every place in the world! And sometimes there is a perception that an org is "coming in from the outside" **depends on whether you're established as a brand or coming in brand new **is there already a directory/dossier of grassroots community organizing efforts in different geographic locations/populations? **better to work with established homegrown local organizations! **Recognize (somehow) local/national chapters **Wikimedia might be a good role model/ **Sounds like another good session topic! *In-person meetings **US sucks for physical in-person meetings! **China & Russia - can use an agency **Canada is much better in North America **Co-location or at least before-after another conference to save money **Asia is better for visas. Vietnam & Thailand **Poor Australians, whom we forget, can get to Asia reasonably easily **What are the goals of the meeting? **Who are the intended audience/attendees? **Take turns for the location, not to exclude the ones who cannot travel as easily **Let the users run meetings, not the central organization **Turkey would be an alternative. *Re culture with Asia: **Language is important! Don't just do it in English! **"Our Japanese community really likes to talk in Japanese" **Chinese, though, 3 strong -- traditional, simplified, & English. & Drupal's Simplified community run by a dude in Boston. Key: find those people, talk with them. **Drupal got Chinese community to collaborate in one place. "we understand there's language barriers, but could we put that aside & choose 1 or 2 languages?" it worked. *In South America, Drupal to run a conference in Portugese & Spanish, choosing -- for that conference -- to exclude English. *Heartwarming story: communicating complicated concepts across natural languages, with BASIC. *Reminder: when speaking English to non-native English speakers, be clear, fewer contractions, fewer collloqualisms & sports analogies **Tip: translate them to Google Translate & back to see how they will seem! **& idea: if you are communicating with someone in another language, autotranslate & include a note? Idea: include English original, machine translation, & a disclaimer. ** Wishlist: Google, GMail -- let me translate a whole thread from one language! Share links to cool and useful tools and sites here: * http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ - Time Zone comparison charts - good for meeting planning *ETHERPAD! http://piratepad.net/ *http://www.freeconferencing.com - phone & skype conference calling, yes, it's free *http://www.freenode.net/ - IRC - OpenMRS uses this as a 24x7 "support" room *Seconding this, from Wikimedia. *http://partychapp.appspot.com/ - Partychat - XMPP/Jabber group IM *OpenMRS is experimenting with Google+ Hangouts for video meetings - bandwidth challenges can be annoying *from IRC: http://www.ipv6.net.tr/fi6en/ floss voip solution for ipv6 ifrastructure... I'll translate the page if anyone is curious about *The new Google Groups UI does automatic translation of individual messages *37 signals - campfire *bots to import IRC logs into wiki - then it's searchable *Skype *OpenHatch -- http://openhatch.org *Microphones & headsets: what's recommended? *I've had good luck with the Everyman model that Skype does (or did) sell online for ca. USD 20. - M. Downey